Air India crash: Cockpit error or fuel system contamination, what brought AI71 down? Probe looks at 2020 UK mishap

The officials investigating the Air India flight AI-171 crash are closely drawing parallels with a February 2020 incident at the UK’s Gatwick airport, and are hunting for clues.

The incident, which involved an Airbus A321, saw the plane’s both engines malfunction shortly after take-off.

The pilots made a Mayday call and returned to the airport after 11 minutes after a turnaround.

Fortunately, the Airbus plane had gained an altitude of almost 3580 feet and was able to make the roundabout and touch down after declaring Mayday thrice. However, the people onboard the doomed Air India plane were not that lucky as it came crashing down after gaining the altitude of just 625 feet.

Looking for clues

The UK Air Accident Investigation Branch (AIIB) later investigated the Airbus incident and found that the reason for the engine failure was fuel system contamination.

This despite engineers clearing the aircraft for operations just ahead of the take-off. Notably, the AIIB investigators have joined the Ahmedabad plane crash probe.

Officials are taking a look at AI-171’s technical logs in the 24 hours preceding the crash.

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Plane lost power after take-off

The officials meanwhile also appear to conclude that the plane lost power immediately after take-off, citing “visual observation and wreckage”.

“The material evidence, which includes the wreckage and the videos of the takeoff as well as the crash, indicate a definite power failure on the flight. The cause will be known only when the black box data is recovered but we can estimate that since the flight was in a takeoff and its nose pitched up for the liftoff, the deployment of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) could not help the flight make a safe turnaround as it had not even achieved the minimum altitude of 3600 feet for a safe path,” Indian Express quoted an officer as saying.

The officer also dismissed speculations around cockpit error, saying the pilots “may have tried their best to gain manual control”.

“It does not appear to be a cockpit error… The observations are that the power failure occurred as soon as the flight was airborne and was unable to climb to the safe path altitude… the (Boeing) 787 Dreamliner has a provision for a manual reversion control system to allow pilots to regain control of critical systems in the event of a hydraulic failure. This system is a backup, using RAT to generate power, but there was no altitude cushion to ensure a safe glide downward or for the pilot to attempt anything… It just dropped on to the medical hostel building, with the tail being impacted and separated due to its liftoff position. Had it achieved an elevation of about 3600-4900 feet, it could have been a different story as planes can safely make Mayday landings with the RAT,” the officer said.

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On fuel contamination

The officer said investigators were looking at technical log of the aircraft to examine whether any technical abnormalities were flagged by any of the previous captains or maintenance staff.

“The aircraft was incoming from Paris to Delhi and from Delhi to Ahmedabad… In fact, it made a round trip to Paris from Delhi on June 11-12. Just a day earlier, it had returned to Delhi after a round trip to Tokyo. We will check the technical logs to see if any of the engineering teams or pilots of the previous flight left comments on the performance of both engines or experienced any ECAM (Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor) message during the flight, accompanied by any thrust issues during flight,” the officer said.

“At this point, we have no reason to speculate a sabotage but if the cause of the engine failure is fuel contamination, which is most likely due to water, the maintenance records of the flight, which are also under scrutiny, will reveal if it was due to oversight or negligence or corrosion in the fuel system, leading to clogging which is rare if the aircraft is regularly serviced. Fuel contaminated with water is the most common cause of power loss in flights and, many times, cannot be detected until the aircraft is actually airborne,” the officer said.